Summer! It’s a great season – except for how hard it is to squeeze everything into mere 24 hour days.

Take this weekend for example. If you like puppets, check out “Puppets Up! International Puppet Festival“. This is the 9th annual such event in lovely Almonte, Ontario. That’s a former mill town along the Mississippi River, about 40 minutes west/south-west of downtown Ottawa.

That was a remarkable reminder of how wrong initial assumptions can be. For some reason, I just thought it was about the industry of making glass and glass products. You know, one of those “eat your spinach” destinations: very healthy, if not exactly delightful. (And I say that as someone who likes glass products and spinach.)

But it’s actually full of beautiful,engrossing art, artifacts and displays. We went late Sunday afternoon (after a day of cycling). Although they stay open until 8 pm, that meant we missed most of the live glass-blowing demonstrations. So we’ll simply “have” to go see it again sometime.

I am sure remarkable events and destinations are on tap in your neighborhood too, because summer is just that way around here. As can be proven by NCPR’s community calendar.

What special place or activity do you think more people should know about?

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postscript: No, the American Mississippi River does not have a smaller tributary up in Ontario. Here is more on the much smaller river of the same name from Wikipedia:

The origin of the river’s name is something of a mystery; although its current spelling may be derived from that of its much larger American cousin, it is most certainly a corruption of a different native name, as the translation ‘great water’ would not apply to a relatively minor tributary of the Ottawa, definitely the largest river in the area. Instead, the name may originate from “Mazinaa[bikinigan]-ziibi“, Algonquian for ‘[painted] image river’, referring to the pictographs found on Mazinaw Lake, though this is by no means proven.

If that’s wrong, or if there’s more to the story of how both rivers share the same name, do please share additional details in the comment section.

About All In

ALL IN is a place for everyone who works at NCPR to share behind the scenes activity, and surprising, curious, lovely or distinctly local tidbits from our travels around the region. We’ll post the best of what we find online, too. From time to time, you may hear from others—if you’d like to write an entry, send it to ellen@ncpr.org. What makes this place what it is? How do we connect to each other and the world? That’s what ALL IN is all about.